Since 1975, the Survey of Doctorate Recipients (SDR) overseen by the NSF has yielded rich data on the occupational paths of Ph.D. recipients. Fielded every two years, the survey is longitudinal in nature, following recipients of doctorates from U.S. institutions until age 76. Until the mid-1990s, the SDR included a survey of humanities doctorate recipients, known as the Survey of Humanities Doctorates (SHD) and funded by the NEH. In 1996, however, the NEH discontinued its support for the SDR, which thereafter tracked only science and engineering Ph.D.’s.

Figure III-7 presents data from the final administration of the SHD, which provides the most current national data that permit a detailed analysis of the occupational trajectories of humanities Ph.D.’s. In 1995, regardless of the number of years since receipt of the doctorate, the majority of employed humanities Ph.D.’s were teaching at the postsecondary level as their principal jobs. For all cohorts of Ph.D. recipients, with the exception of those who had received their degrees five or fewer years earlier, a substantial minority also made their way into management or administrative positions. Approximately 5% of each cohort had jobs as artists, writers, or mass media specialists.

Figure III-7, Full Size Supporting Data

There were, however, differences among cohorts. Thus, whereas just over 73% of those who had their doctorates five years or less held faculty jobs in postsecondary institutions, this percentage was lower for each of the next two cohort groups and amounted to approximately 61% for those who held Ph.D.’s for 6–15 years and 54% for those with doctorates for 16–25 years. This finding raises the question of whether the observed differential is attributable to generational differences in the desire or ability of Ph.D.’s to obtain faculty positions or to a tendency for humanities Ph.D.’s to leave academic employment as they age.

In the absence of longitudinal data that could be used to chart the subsequent career paths of these cohorts of humanities doctorate recipients, answering these questions is not possible, that is, it is not possible to distinguish cohort effects, which involve generational differences, from age effects, which have to do with what occurs over the life course for all cohorts (see Indicator V-3, Book Reading, in which the differences between these two types of effects are explained in greater detail and the way in which longitudinal data make it possible to distinguish between them is demonstrated). However, the National Survey of College Graduates conducted by the NSF does supply cross-sectional data that can shed some light on these important issues.

Because the NSF’s interest is in the career paths of those with undergraduate degrees in science and engineering, humanities Ph.D.’s are not the primary focus of the survey. But as a means of identifying people with such science and engineering degrees, the NSF gathers detailed educational and occupational information from a sample of approximately 200,000 individuals drawn from the larger pool of all those who indicated in their decennial census forms that they had completed at least an undergraduate degree. This process, conducted once a decade, generates a wealth of data on holders of nonscience degrees, both undergraduate and advanced, which the NSF does not analyze itself but does make available to researchers and the general public. Subsequent edition of the Humanities Indicators will include analyses of these data from 1993 and 2003.